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Mega Millions logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don’t know whether I will be among the winners of Wednesday’s’ Mega Millions lottery drawing—the chances are extremely low, but I do have two tips for the winner (s), if any:

First Tip: Don’t pay someone to lose you money

I do know this rule very well, not as a lottery winner, but as a naïve investor with a Ph.D. in economics fresh out of school, when I hired Sam, an investment consultant with a major financial firm to manage an Individual Retirement Account (IRA).

Sam convinced me that he could deliver an 18 percent return by placing my money in the Special Situations Fund—more than twice what my IRA was earning in a bank account.

That was long-time ago before anyone had heard about Quantitative Easing.

As it turned out, this decision was a disaster. First, Sam didn’t work for free; and he didn’t intend to manage my money either. He was a middleman. He did charge me a 4 percent commission for the privilege of turning my money over to a Special Situations fund team, which charged another 2 percent annually for management fees.

Ouch! There went 6 percent of my money for the first year.

Second, the fund performed poorly for a couple of years, and when the crash of 1987 came, it lost 25 percent of its value. Double ouch!

My story is neither new nor unique. In the early 2000s, scores of investors lured by the advice of financial analysts and brokers invested in high tech stocks like Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), JDS Uniphase, Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN), EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC), and Lucent Technologies—now Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) -- trading near triple digits back then and in the middle-teens or single-digits ten years later, not to mention Nortel Networks, and Global Crossing, which filed for bankruptcy.

In 2006-7, investors poured billions of dollars into homebuilder and financial stocks, following glowing reports about the state of the US housing and financial sectors -- losing a great deal of money when the real estate bubble burst.

Second tip: Don’t equate the rich life with the good life

Winning a great deal of money overnight can assure a prosperous life. But not a good life, which requires reason.

That means the capacity to examine life and search for opportunities to expand your mental and spiritual horizons; to understand what can be controlled in life; to distinguish between false and true pleasures; to identify and treasure true friendships; to attain a properly balanced existence; to be a responsible human being; and to be kind to others.

Those are qualities which can contribute to a meaningful spiritual life.

The bottom line: Holding on to money is often more difficult than acquiring it. And living a good life requires reason, in addition to money.